Uma Devi (Tun Tun)
Uma Devi walked into Naushad's house in 1946 and told him she would jump in the sea if he did not give her a song. He gave her Dard (1947), and Afsana Likh Rahi Hoon became one of the biggest hits of the decade. A few years later, with her voice falling out of fashion and her weight rising, she asked Naushad for acting work instead, and as Tun Tun she played comic parts in nearly two hundred films.
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Life
She was born in 1923 in a village near Alipur in what is now Uttar Pradesh, was orphaned young and brought up by an uncle, and taught herself to sing from the radio and the gramophone. She came to Bombay alone at twenty-three. Naushad tested her, signed her, and after Dard she sang for him in Anokhi Ada and Chandni Raat, and for others in a dozen films between 1947 and 1950.
When the lighter voices took over she turned to acting, taking the name Tun Tun from Naushad and Dilip Kumar. Babul (1950) was her first; Aar Paar, Mr. & Mrs. 55, Pyaasa and nearly every comedy of the 1950s and 1960s followed, usually paired with Johnny Walker, Bhagwan Dada or Agha. She retired in 1990 and died in Mumbai in 2003.
The voice
Uma Devi's singing voice was warm and heavy in the 1940s manner, with a sob in it that Naushad used for the sad song; Afsana Likh Rahi Hoon has an urgency few singers of the time matched.
Composers
- Naushad
- Husnlal-Bhagatram
- Shyam Sundar
Sang with
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